What does love appear to be? In mainstream movie and tv, it often means grand gestures, dramatic fallings out and reunions – and all of those highs and lows navigated by folks with outstanding facial symmetry, in fact. The quick documentary Couple in a Room Smoking Cigarettes (2020) invitations viewers to bear witness to a much less romantic, though, for a lot of world wide, maybe extra relatable type of love. Following Jadwiga and Wiesław Wójcikowie over the course of a day, Katarzyna Gondek, a Polish-born filmmaker based mostly in Belgium, provides a close-up have a look at the quotidian routines that outline their lives collectively. Happening wordlessly and fully inside the confines of their house, the rhythms of toe-tapping, song-humming, loud night breathing, coffee-drinking and, because the title guarantees, the lighting of many a cigarette, turn out to be mesmerising because the movie unfolds. With a mushy focus, sharp edits and shut consideration to the sounds of on a regular basis life, the manufacturing finds an unlikely poetry within the unremarkable paces of the couple’s partnership.
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